


The Weary World

by meanderingsoul



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Baking, Christmas Cookies, Domestic Fluff, Gen, M/M, That Bread Life, show typical levels of blasphemy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 13:19:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9183406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanderingsoul/pseuds/meanderingsoul
Summary: Cas had started squinting at cookie cutters in stores around Halloween.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MajorEnglishEsquire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorEnglishEsquire/gifts), [orange_crushed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_crushed/gifts).
  * Inspired by [PWP: Pie Without Plot](https://archiveofourown.org/works/914821) by [MajorEnglishEsquire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorEnglishEsquire/pseuds/MajorEnglishEsquire), [orange_crushed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_crushed/pseuds/orange_crushed). 



 

That first Christmas things had still felt a bit too raw for them to really work out their holiday season menu, with no bakery to put it in and them still feeling out the whole food truck gig.

All Dean and Cas’s previous big plans for holiday flavors just felt bust, empty. Cranberry-orange, pistachio, and mint and rich walnut, cinnamon-nutmeg, eggnog, and praline. Butterscotch. Terrifyingly red cherries. Way, way too much chocolate.

They hadn’t had the stomach to touch the fall flavors either.

So that first December with the three of them in the bunker, Dean made four little batches of fudge in the new loaf pans he’d had to order, the idiot proof recipe you could make with sweetened condensed milk. Plain chocolate, milk and dark, dark chocolate orange, and a surprisingly pretty white chocolate pistachio-cranberry. They’d tried the more from scratch kinds back in the bakery, those recipes where you cooked down the milk or butter, but those took so much sugar Sammy had cringed and refused to eat more than half a piece and Cas always ate some of the thickened milk with a spoon as soon as someone popped a can, so why bother making it complicated. They all ate a few squares that night, rich and crumbly-creamy, and more had disappeared throughout the next day, but on the 22nd Sam had spotted a hunt over in Kentucky, so they’d tossed some snow chains in Baby’s trunk, shoved the fudge into the bunker’s old fridge, and hit the road in less than two hours.

It was a double-poltergeist haunting, a couple who’d died in an accidental fire 60 years ago and who were getting more and more antsy as time dragged on. They all had some bruises, had broken some poor shop owner’s furniture in the skirmish. Sammy had a split lip the likes of which Dean hadn’t seen since the kid slipped and fell in a motel bathtub in Arizona back when he’d been five. Cas had scraped up his left forearm pretty good and Dean’s left hip was aching from falling those last four steps.

They’d probably been a sorry sight in the ancient looking Randall’s, buying eggnog and too much rum, stuff to put together sandwiches for dinner, with Cas leaning on the cart and debris in Sammy’s hair.

Cas blinked slowly out Baby’s window, had barely said a word since the hunt finished and Dean helped him bandage his arm. Sam kept shooting Dean worried looks, but Dean just shook his head. Cas always got quiet around stuff like equinoxes and old Holy days. The way things had ended up with his Grace; that was still such a fucking mess Dean tried not to think about it much, or he’d wind up staring at a wall or something, his nails digging red into his own skin.

They all drank eggnog and watched the classic Charlie Brown Christmas special in peaceful silence until Sammy finally shuffled off to bed with a bitchy little wisecrack about Dean not being the Grinch for some poor little girl this year. This only earned him a gentle noogie, because it was Christmas after all, and Dean hadn’t actually meant to steal Sam a Barbie doll that one year. Cas was still perched in front of the cheap tv, feet together and chin tucked between the tops of his knees and his folded arms, back hunched out like a bird fluffed up in the cold. Some Christmas concert show had come on, color and noise.

Dean ended up swaying Cas around the motel room to hit, foot to foot, some real junior prom level stuff. Cas hid his face in against his neck, Dean’s fingers in the downy dark fluff on the back of his neck.

It was hardly their worst Christmas ever. Even if Dean did wake up at four in the morning with the tip of Cas’s nose pressed to his bicep and absolutely nowhere for them to be, no scent of rosemary or yeast.

It never worked out that they brought their food truck on all their hunts. Sometimes they were headed somewhere so small and remote there just wouldn’t be enough people to sell to, places the roads might be too rough and narrow and Cas’s triple-A would be a pipe dream. Sometimes the hunt was somewhere mountainous, and taking a goddamned, top-heavy food truck up and down those inclines was asking for trouble. Sometimes they all knew it’d be a quick job and they let the impala eat up some empty highway at top speed.

But if the hunt was gonna take a few days of digging, if they were going to be near a town or two, they took the truck. Sometimes Cas drove it alone, with the windows rolled down and his weird collection of favorite tunes playing at a volume that normal humans couldn’t hear. Sometimes Sam rode with him and they took turns driving and Dean would turn up his tapes as loud as he wanted and smile at their flailing conversations in the rearview mirror. Sometimes, though not often, Sam had the impala to himself and Dean sprawled in the seat next to Cas with wind in his hair and one hand curled around Cas’s gorgeous thigh.

Cas had got frustrated quickly at first, having to learn to bake small-batch, having to quarter and halve their tried and true recipes and not always getting the results they were used to, having to limit the variations of new things he made. Got so pissed a few times he didn’t cook anything for days, vanished once into a lost closet full of untranslatable leviathan lore for so long once Sam went to go find him for dinner with a flashlight.

There was still just only so much three guys could _eat_.

They’d found a few places that would accept donated baked goods, a few kitchens and pantries that Sam made calls to, and also the kinds of small churches that Cas didn’t scowl at and mutter dark things about filthy money, the kinds where he greeted the preachers or sisters or choir masters with soft words, walked around buildings made of rusting sheet metal or chipped bricks with solemnity, ran gentle hands along the landscaping and old wood and cut warding into their door-frames when no one was looking.

Dean always wondered if maybe someone, somewhere, knew what kind of a gift they’d been given.

They actually baked more than Dean had ever been able to picture keeping up with outside the bakery.

Dean had that early morning habit ground into his hide like flour now, woke up around six and most days he baked a loaf or two of bread. If there was bread on hand he stayed in bed, listened to Sam get up and head outside for his run, watched Cas blink himself awake because that never got old. They always kept his White Mountain loaf on hand, honey wheat for Sam to toast, rosemary braids, sourdough, revolving varieties of focaccia. Sam found a farmers market within driving distance where he’d vanish with Cas, come back with sweet butter and soft cheeses. Cas spent time working through more complicated pastas, the way he still did with the focaccia. Dean would throw together a pie with whatever fruit was in season every week or so, but he still spent most of his time with his bread.

Sometimes they took the truck out when there wasn’t a hunt, when cash was running low, spent a few days parking in busy town centers and shopping districts, or followed concert and sporting event crowds. Sam kept track of the books and parking ordinances and managed the fucking register since he still couldn’t be trusted not to over-knead anything. Dean never dug through their books, didn’t care about the numbers, but Cas paid off his credit card almost every month and they had more legit money on hand than Dean had seen in years. Maybe ever.

It felt normal in a way he’d never been able to picture for them before, like everything had sifted down into place.

This year, this Christmas it was obvious Cas had Plans.

They still sold a lot of cookies and tarts out of the truck, not as many full sized pies and cakes and cheesecakes as they’d used to run through. Dean and Cas had spent four days in a whirl back in the spring, making and perfecting handpies, glazed and unglazed, fruits or cheese or bitter chocolates. The smaller items sold better from the truck, and it was nice to throw themselves into a kitchen project again.

Really nice.

Sam had given up on trying to make them go outside the second day and left them to it, parked himself in the library with the pair of those oversized, over-ear headphones Tracy had told him he should buy. He was trying to learn enough html to set up a decent website, something where people could maybe commission them or suggest events where they’d like to see the truck selling food, maybe with some geographic limits in place. They didn’t spend weeks and weeks away from the bunker anymore.

 Cas’s asiago-tomato-basil handpie was so good Sam’d hummed embarrassingly loud and closed his eyes, opened them to Cas grinning like a lunatic two inches from his face. He’d told Dean the apple handpie was too sweet and Dean had thrown up his hands, stomped away leaving a cloud of powdered sugar settling onto the library table behind him.

The handpies were a big success the next time they took the truck out.

They had almost three dozen cookie recipe standards, ten kinds of chocolate chip, peanut butter, shortbread, snickerdoodles, their huge, chewy cookies which frequently got the overflow of chips and candies from someone’s last experiment mixed in, flat sugar cookies in brown and white.

Cas had started squinting at cookie cutters in stores around Halloween.

Dean thought maybe he’d bought himself that first one that time they’d had to stop in a dingy Target at 10 p.m. They’d both seen him snag a set on a string in a Market Street in Amarillo. Sam helped him hide a handful from a thrift store in his own larger pockets before they got back in the impala and Cas bought one right in front of all of them in that diner in Grand Island, a Christmas star with its trailing tail.

By December Cas had handfuls of little, metal cookie-cutters, stars and ornaments, trees and tiny angels. He laid them out in a neat row on the bunker’s kitchen worktable, mixed up a large batch of their brown sugar cookies like he had dozens of times before.

But then there was the whole frosting and icing debacle that Dean probably should have seen coming.

They’d never really done decorated cookies in the bakery. They had buttercreams they knew by heart and royal icing and even Sam couldn’t fuck up a powdered sugar and water glaze, but this was Cas and Cas could never just touch on a topic, it was full throttle all the way. Buttercream apparently wasn’t right for decorating, royal icing was ‘too crunchy and loud’ for the softer brown sugar cookies, and powdered sugar glaze was boring. He wanted something _just right_.

He’d mix up a small batch of some recipe, frost a cookie, watch it dry, prod at it critically, roll his eyes in exasperation and start over, saying things like, “this icing is _gloppy_ Dean,” while he reset his work area. Dean hummed sympathetically and left him to it.

After three hours Dean wandered back into the kitchen to turn the ham steaks in their marinade and Cas had settled on some blend of powdered sugar, vanilla, corn syrup (the real kind), and melted butter, and was contentedly spooning colored icing into piping bags.

But after the first two dozen cookies, Cas was already bored.

Dean could tell. This was white chocolate and, and the whole artsy danishes mess all over again. Something behind the guy’s shoulders just drooped and that light behind his eyes fogged over.

Dean’s piping skills had never been worth much. He’d never had the patience for much fancy presentation, or seen the point. His lattice top crust was good enough far as he was concerned, flaky and golden.  Their pie edges were only ever crimped up with fingers or patted flat with a fork. Sometimes Cas spent time giving ridiculously fancy things on Pinterest contemplative looks, but he’d never pursued it the way he’d put his foot down on making stupid cake balls that one time. And Dean had at the time been more impressed with Cas’s assertion of his still-brand-new, grouchy temper than he’d been willing to keep to his ‘no ridiculous decorating crap’ commitment.

But after watching Cas ice another six ornament cookies in red and pipe on delicate white swirls with blank, mechanical determination, Dean sighed, finished his coffee, and rolled up his sleeves to help.

Cas physically took the red piping bag away after the first ten seconds when Dean squeezed too hard and it got all over the table, but Cas was laughing, that low chuckle with the too-wide, ridiculous smile that was like sunshine on snow and shiny bells on trees, so Dean didn’t even give a shit. He dragged a kiss across Cas’s temple, breathed in salt and Cas and sugar.

Turned out frosting cookies like this was boring as fuck.

And Cas had baked what seemed like _hundreds_ (but was probably closer to 80).

Sammy was still a disaster in the kitchen. He couldn’t be near the oven without sweating everywhere and tying his hippie hair up. He stirred things too hard and gleefully rolled out cookies too thin, but after _another_ dozen, tiny, colorful cookies and dropping one face-down on his clean floor, Dean was ready to _scream_.

He stomped into what had become the lower library and rapped on Sam’s stupid huge purple headphones. Sam startled and pouted up at him, the big baby.

“Dude, what gives?”

“You found a hunt or something?”

“No? I think I found a record of a variation on the…”

“Ok, yeah. Stop there. Come help in the kitchen.”

Sammy blinked. “I thought Cas had a project going?”

“No, Cas has a fricken disaster everywhere. Shut your stuff down and help or I’m closing the lid in 3 - 2…”

Sam flailed for his laptop. “What the shit, stop it! Fine. Coming. Let me save this. Jerk.”

Even Sammy kinda screeched to a halt at the sight of the kitchen. "Um. Whoah. Hi Cas."

"Hello Samuel."

Cas said Sam's name funny sometimes, like it was an in-joke or something. Dean picked his spoon up and got back to work. “Just slap some frosting on some cookies would you?”

“Icing,” Cas said seriously at both of them.

“Fine, icing. Just slap a layer of icing on or we’ll be at this for three damn days.”

Cas paused piping blue onto stars, examined the contents of the table, and handed Sam a stack of round ornament shapes and a cereal bowl of red icing. Went back to piping.

There really were piles of unfrosted cookies everywhere.

“Seriously? Still piping stuff? They’re not all gonna turn out pretty Cas. This was way too many for just us. What the hell were you thinking, baking so many?” Dean said.

Cas glowered at Dean in a way that still looked dangerous as hell and Dean stared back before rolling his eyes, sighing and nodding silently. Cas nodded too and went back to icing a tree like a whole conversation with actual words had taken place. Sam kept his fricken head down and smeared red onto the round cookies he’d been handed because he was not an idiot, thank you, and trying to figure out how Dean and Cas communicated was a complete waste of his time.

Cas went back to piping. Despite the frowning and complaining Dean smoothed white and blue onto snowflakes with careful neatness. Sam’s ornaments weren’t as nice and neat, but Cas had never teased Sam for being inept at this stuff, and after green and gold got piped over them they actually looked pretty good.

Even with all three of them, it was nighttime before all the cookies had a base layer of icing on.

The kitchen was a disaster. Every baking tray they owned (which really was a shitton, Sam would need to reign in the supply shopping pretty soon) covered every flat surface, including on top of the fridge and the stove. Cas had somehow gently shooed Dean down to the garage or something before he had a fit about the mess in his nice, clean kitchen and tried to do something stupid like use the bunker’s ancient, fifties era vacuum cleaner again.

They had one tray of reject cookies that Sam was idly frosting while Cas sorted out the rest of his project, cookies that had browned too much on the edges or gotten crooked coming out of the oven. Cas set all the bowls in the sink to soak, wiped down his work surface, lined up the refilled piping bags, because a full third of the cookies still needed details on them somehow.

Sam was humming along a little with some Christmas song on their old box radio.

“I do remember the night,” Cas said, “when the child you’ve come to call Christ was born. Of course it was actually early summer. The lambs were growing larger in the fields and wandering away from safety, and the insect song was loud as thunder. The path of Jupiter in this night sky had shifted back on itself. It was a beautiful night. Clear. You could view the white curves of the Milky Way with the human eye. But no angel was in a vessel or on the earth. We stayed in the thermosphere and sang out anticipation. There were probably an undue number of auroras that night,” he finished thoughtfully.

Sam stopped and stared.

Cas piped red and grey dot ornaments onto a green, tree-shaped cookie. There was a smudge of powdered sugar on his cheek.

They worked in silence for a little while. Cas piped details onto one full tray of cookies, set all the piping bags into the fridge for a moment to cool, circulated the kitchen stacking and bagging the dried cookies, and then iced another tray. Sam frosted a slightly crooked angel with the dregs of a pearly grey icing, took a spoon and dripped on two blue eyes, only a little crooked.

He picked up the cookie and handed it to Castiel.

Cas looked down at it, small in his hand, and smiled briefly at Sam, the crooked little one he’d grown used to seeing these last few years.

“I am not angelic Sam,” he said.

“It’s like you told me about Dean one time, the whole Righteous Man thing? About how heaven was actually defining righteous, everything you thought they missed or got skipped over. The power and speed and all that, the blinding light, that was never the stuff that mattered. It wasn’t that stuff that made you an angel to us. Not really.”

Maybe that awesome power had had something to do with it at first, but the guy who snored in their backseat and took _a bus_ to help them fight Pestilence, who’d taken off a vamp head with one swing when it turned on Sam too fast last month, who woke and shushed Dean through a night terror last week before Sam had even blearily kicked off his sheets; that guy was still more of an angel than any one Sam had ever seen.

Cas wasn’t smiling anymore, face completely blank as he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Sam’s forehead, soft and warm and dry like Sam remembered from when he was very little, his empty fingers gentle on the back of his skull.

Sam tried not to flinch when Cas snapped the little wings off the cookie and ate them. Or when he absently bit off the little head before eating the rest.

“Thank you. It is good Sam,” he said, and went back to piping.

Sam was still never really sure how Cas meant that word.

Christmas Eve Castiel drove out to a handful of churches, offered up extra dinner rolls and bags of decorated Christmas cookies for them to use before services, or to gift to their flocks on Christmas morning. He embraced the humans who worked there. He texted Dean when he was heading back to the bunker, in case they needed any final ingredient from the store in Lebanon.

That night he roasted potatoes to go with Dean’s ham steaks and rosemary rolls, blessed the meal silently before they ate all together in the library, a blessing without any mention of higher powers, the only kind he was still willing to say.

They ate many of the sugar cookies afterwards, more than Castiel knew he should have eaten. He felt heavy and too warm, but did not care.

They were watching some movie set on a tropical island that Dean had insisted was somehow a Christmas movie. Sam sprawled on the floor with his head resting back on the couch near Castiel’s foot. Cas let himself doze against Dean’s shoulder.

The star they’d hung up on the wall in the absence of a dying fir tree shone brightly.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic hit me while bored to tears, frosting the Family Christmas Cutouts this past holiday season and working on my piping technique. Which still sucks.
> 
> I've read PWP so many times, and it was such an inspiring read to just get off my ass, stop waiting to be able to take a class or something and just learn new things. I did a blue velvet cake from scratch last year, learned to make pastry cream and three new methods of pie crust, made those bakery-perfect white sugar cookies and jumbo, crunchy sugar topped muffins. I made some really awful pumpkin cookies and still haven't tried foccacia, but I know I will eventually. And I know I'm not the only one who had that kind of experience reading PWP. 
> 
> So, thank you Major and thank you Orange. I hope you enjoyed this little tribute.


End file.
